Living Witness(24)

“Gregor?”

“I’m waking up,” Gregor said. “I do remember this a little. Something happened to her. She got mugged, or something. She ended up in a coma. Did she die? What does that have to do with a monkey trial in Snog’s Bush—”

“Snow Hill,” Bennis said. “And no, she didn’t die, not as far as I know. But that’s the thing, you see. She was the odd man out on the school board, the one who wasn’t a Creationist.”

“On that school board?” Gregor asked. Now he did remember. The odd thing that had been going on in his mind about Bennis began to recede. He’d start panicking about getting married later. He topped up his coffee and leaned against the edge of the sink. “I thought that was odd at the time,” he said. “I remember that.”

“You did think it was odd,” Bennis said. “Anyway, I don’t really know if Annie-Vic has anything to do with it, but John said he needed a favor and it was about the monkey trial, and this is the only monkey trial I know of, so I figure it all has to fit in. You know, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if you skipped the Ararat today and went down to talk to the newly minted Mayor of Philadelphia. It would save you, me, and Tibor a lot of trouble, and maybe there’ll even be a case you can work on to keep you out of my hair.”

“I thought you needed me in your hair,” Gregor said.

“I did when I was making decisions, but the decisions are made,” Bennis said, “and now you’re mostly either getting in the way or reminding me that we’re a bomb ready to explode. And it is going to explode, Gregor, and you know it. I’ve been ducking Leda and Hannah for a week. I even offered to send Tibor on a vacation to Jamaica for the duration.”

“Is that where we’re going, Jamaica?” Gregor said. “I don’t understand how you can wait until the last minute to finalize plans for a honeymoon.”

“It doesn’t matter where we go, Gregor, you’ll show up on the beach in a suit, a tie, and wing tips. I really did mean it. It would make a lot of sense for you to get out of here. The closer we get to the actual wedding, the more of this kind of trouble there’s going to be.”

“I don’t understand why there’s any trouble at all,” Gregor said. “You’re okay with it. I’m okay with it. Tibor hasn’t said he won’t come, he’s just said we can’t have the ceremony in the church, which makes perfect sense since you don’t belong to the church and I don’t believe in God. If it’s all right for all of us, why isn’t it all right with the Cavanaugh Street Ladies Improvement and Meddling Society, or whatever they think they are?”

“If I knew that, I could solve all the problems in the Middle East,” Bennis said. “Never mind. Finish your coffee and go down and see John. Snow Hill isn’t that far from here. Maybe he has something he wants you to investigate, and you’ll have a case, and you’ll only be home really late at night and you’ll avoid them altogether.”

“I wonder if it’s even plausible,” Gregor said. “Do you think that a bunch of Creationists would mug an old lady because she didn’t like Creationism? It doesn’t sound sensible, does it?”

“I can’t imagine why anybody would want to mug Annie-Vic at all,” Bennis said. “Oh, maybe I’m just talking nonsense. Maybe she was walking around with a purse stuffed with money, although that doesn’t sound like any of the things I’ve heard about her. Go and see John. Tibor and I will try to hold the fort.”

“We should have just run off to Jamaica in the first place and gotten married on the plane,” Gregor said. “Ship’s captains can perform weddings. Why can’t airplane pilots? An airplane is a ship, isn’t it? An airship.”

“Go,” Bennis said.

Gregor started to go, but he wasn’t fast enough. If he’d been paying any attention, he would have known they were about to be invaded. He would have heard the sound of the women on the stairs. They were doing nothing to keep their approach under the radar. And he should have known that his door wouldn’t stop them, either. He was not like most of the people on Cavanaugh Street. He had no illusions that this was a special place, hermetically sealed off from the problems of the rest of Philadelphia. He did not leave his door unlocked. It didn’t matter. By now, everybody had keys to everything anyway. They might as well all have been living in one big Armenian-American commune, complete with flowers in their hair and substandard plumbing.

There was a knock on the door, and both Gregor and Bennis looked up. There was a rattling of the knob. Hannah Krekorian’s voice floated down the foyer toward them.